First million votes

Already one million votes have been cast on ideas by Ubuntu users! Whoah!

Call for moderators for project-specific Brainstorm frontends

At the moment, ideas at Ubuntu Brainstorm can concern any project, Ubuntu-related or upstream. That's nice, but as a project maintainer, you may want more visibility with a part of the website dedicated to your project and an easier way to deal with your ideas, by having some control over them.

That's what is coming next! If you are willing to moderate it, you can ask for a brainstorm.ubuntu.com/project_name/ area. This "subsection" will be like the current Brainstorm site, and use the same idea database, but ideas will be filtered by your project - it's basically a Brainstorm frontend for your project.

If you are interested, you can ask for it for the next update on the mailing list or in IRC (#ubuntu-testing). So who wants a Xubuntu or Kubuntu Brainstorm frontend? :)

Ideas XML export

Of course, for project maintainers who are interested in the feedback and who want to use their own tools, an idea XML export will be provided at the next update.

Ubuntu developer Martin Pitt (pitti on irc) has responded to some of your ideas:

Idea #3916: Easy file sharing between local users
Idea #3859: Warn on shutdown when multiple users logged in
Idea #4347: gksudo if I try to do an action I don't have access to
Idea #190: work on printer drivers
Idea #316: Codec Manager
Idea #4354: Tease programming on Ubuntu
Idea #5682: Password strength
Idea #214: Easy (GUI) creation and handling of encrypted partitions
Idea #5390: Offer to create a separate /home partition and use existing ones

For the next hug day, on Tuesday, June 24th, we will be doing something quite different. We generally focus on moving bugs from the New status to Incomplete or Confirmed, but on the next hug day we'll work on helping move bugs from Fix Committed to Fix Released! We'll do this by verifying that packages in the hardy-proposed repository fix the bugs they were designed to and that the package still functions that way it should. The list of targeted bugs and tasks is posted at:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20080624

Our goal is to have at least two people test every bug in that list. In particular there are a number of installer, Wubi, and Java fixes that we'd like to verify. So on 24 June 2008, in all timezones, we'll be meeting in #ubuntu-bugs on irc.freenode.net for a very special Ubuntu Hug Day.

Hi!

Here is some new stuff on Ubuntu Brainstorm:

Assigning ideas to a project You can now link ideas to projects. Projects include of course software projects, but also Ubuntu websites, and Ubuntu editions! That will make the job easier for people tracking ideas for their favorite projects. Now I recommend every idea authors to review their ideas and link them to a project! This feature is the first step before we can make the project-specific sub-brainstorm websites.
Tags It was a long standing popular request : you can now tag an idea. Mark ideas with your own tags, and make groups of related ideas!
Contact a Brainstormer You have seen people willing to work on an idea, and you want to participate too? As requested by this idea, you can now contact each others using the "contact" area in the user page. Note that you can forbid people to send you messages by going to your dashboard and changing the relevant option.
Faster Brainstorm On the overall, you should find Brainstorm faster. The only exception is the search function, which has an hard time looking at all your ideas! That should be fixed in the next update.

Mirco Muller, Ubuntu "bling" expert, has written in some responses to some Brainstorm ideas:

• Fix compatibility with webcams and microphone
• Include Compiz Fusion Manager by default
• Make it possible to mark applications "Disable Compiz when running"
• Create a standard gaming environment for ubuntu
• Partner with big name game developers
• Alt+Tab from fullscreen apps

Three months after the launch, it was time to do a small recap and lay out the plans for the next months.

At the moment, we can say that we have reached one of our goals: we are getting lots of feedback from you, and we are thankful! What an amazing community! We are now working towards a better feedback to your input : Starting this cycle, there should be some regular developer feedback on popular ideas, directly on the idea page, or on this blog, such as the latest three developer responses. You are developer and want to comment ideas? Please follow these directions.

In the next months, the work will be focused on an easier classification of ideas in projects, so that it can be exploited by non-Ubuntu software developers. Some possibilities include :

• assigning an idea to a project.
• searching by project.
• moderation of ideas by the project's software developers.
• the creation of sub-brainstorm websites ([project_name].brainstorm.ubuntu.com), which would use the same Brainstorm database, but with ideas filtered by project.

Also coming is an easy way for Brainstorm users to contact each other, tools for Ubuntu developers to spot and keep track of the interesting ideas, and in the long rung, we are heading towards a project neutral release, but don't expect it too soon.

Finally, there may be some more features, but it's up to you, contributors, to start participating in Brainstorm development by working on one of these mentored tasks :)

Font expert Arne Goetje writes in about brainstorm idea 303:

While this is certainly a nice idea, I'm afraid we won't see this kind of GUI any time soon. The reason for this is, that font management on Linux systems is a very complex issue if you care about all kind of applications being able to use the fonts. We will have to be able to deal with dozens of incompatible font formats and at least the same amount of ways to configure them and different locations to install them in, depending on the application you want to use them with.

Hey!

You were looking for some time to participate to a great Open Source project, and you happen to have some knowledge in PHP, HTML, JS, or SQL?

Ubuntu Brainstorm is waiting for you! Here is a list of mentored tasks, ranging from easy to hard. If you are interested, you should really contact us on #ubuntu-testing on irc.freenode.net (IRC), or alternatively use the mailing list. We will then help you to set up your working environment and work on the feature you choose, and if you are doing a great job, your work will be merged to Brainstorm!

Okay, okay so it's a small virtual screen, but it's a start.

UME (Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded) is not ready for your mobile phone or pda yet, but it will work on the new batches of ultra small x86 pc's that are emerging from major manufacturers.

So you've seen the pretty picture and now you want it. Well follow the simple guide here and you can test it on your pc using KVM (kernel virtual machine) or MIC (moblin image creator). There are a bunch of things to try out here.

If you think it's great and want to complement everyone, or your having issue, you can find them on #ubuntu-testing and #ubuntu-mobile.

If you find bugs, glitches, design flaws etc report them here .

Thanks for the help and happy mobile testing.

Ubuntu X.org maintainer Bryce Harrington responds to Brainstorm Idea 2978:

Brainstorm 2978 and its comments detail problems with the level of support and quality of available open and proprietary drivers for AMD/ATI hardware. The desire is to have Canonical work more closely with AMD/ATI engineers to change this situation.

The short answer is this: AMD/ATI engineers have recently started working with us on both -fglrx and -ati issues, and I anticipate seeing significant improvements in this driver for Intrepid.

Keep reading for a lot more background and detail.